By Nele Anslinger

The campaign

The peace movement is confronted with a central social problem: Insufficient trust in the non-violent ability of civil society to defend itself in the face of a multitude of flaring conflicts worldwide.

This is why the "Wehrhaft ohne Waffen" campaign was founded. It brings social defense, a non-military form of defense, into the security policy debate. We want to offer an alternative to security logic and show where traditional military defense reaches its limits. While security logic is primarily geared towards powerfully countering the threat of external violence and often resorts to military methods, social defense is based on the ideas of peace logic, as formulated by peace researcher Hanne-Margret Birckenbach.

A peace-logic perspective sees the problem not as an external threat, but as the threat of violence resulting from complex problems. This violence should ideally be countered preventively, or at least with methods that reduce violence. In contrast to security logic, which focuses on deterrence, social defense, just like peace logic, is oriented towards de-escalation and - where possible - dialogue.

Social defense draws on familiar methods of non-violent resistance, but sometimes also develops them further, such as the further development of the general strike described by Theodor Ebert into "dynamic continued work without collaboration": people continue to show up for work, but do not take orders, work deliberately slowly or make mistakes, thereby driving up the costs of occupation. It thus enables the ability to act when traditional defense reaches its limits. The aim of the campaign is to bring these forms of defense into the public debate as a serious alternative and thus raise public awareness of non-violent defense options. In this way, we are creating the social basis for building up pressure on the government to create the appropriate political framework in a second step.

What can social defense look like?

Social defense does not concentrate on securing territorial borders, but rather social institutions such as democracy, the legal system and infrastructure. The focus is on preserving human lives, democratic and self-determined ways of life and the necessities of life without passively surrendering to aggressors or resorting to violence. Studies such as those by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan in 2011 and 2021 show that civil resistance is roughly twice as successful as violent resistance.

Unlike spontaneous non-violent actions, long-term civil resistance and social defense require sustained and active civil society engagement as a basis. In addition, the willingness to get involved in the preparation and organization on the ground is necessary. Social defense is therefore dependent on social cohesion and solidarity. Reflecting on the divisions in our society is therefore an essential part of our campaign work. We want to build a society that people consider worthy of protection. This means, for example, reflecting on and reducing social inequality and discrimination. And it means that we can and want to put social defense into practice only if we clearly distance ourselves from inhuman ideologies.

The fact that social defense as an overall concept has never progressed beyond the theoretical stage is both a challenge and an opportunity. At the same time, there are a multitude of ways of acting around the world - from the non-violent resistance of Norwegian teachers against Nazi occupation, to Gandhi's Salt March, to strikes, which we can understand and interpret as elements of social defense. As a campaign, we are therefore not only highlighting historical examples, but also exploring the range of nonviolent actions and integrating them into a current and contemporary context of social defense.

Participate

To achieve this, the campaign has a dual structure consisting of an umbrella campaign and local model regions. The umbrella campaign takes on coordinating tasks, forms the national network and gives the work of the model regions a nationwide stage. Social defense is experienced and tested in the model regions. Following the organizing approach, for example, local groups are networked with each other.

In our model region of Berlin-Moabit, this means working together with disaster control as well as local neighborhood work to become a comprehensive contact point for resilience as a "lighthouse center". In Wendland, with its experience in civilian anti-nuclear resistance, the experienced groups will be brought together with local fire departments and solidarity agriculture, among others, to work together on pressing local challenges such as increasing right-wing tendencies. In the Upper Rhine region, cross-border cooperation with France is again the focus of the work.

We evaluate such concrete experiences in order to process them scientifically.

All interested individuals, initiatives and groups have the following options:

• On the website wehrhaft-ohne-waffen.de you can see where people are already active in your area.
• For conceptual co-design of the campaign, there is the possibility to participate in various working groups (e.g. on education, public relations, networking and conferences, intersectionality).
• Organizations also have the opportunity to join our alliance.00

As Social Defense is based on broad participation, we welcome active contributions, ideas and networking - so we can work on a serious alternative in the security policy debate!